Maria Spiridonova

Maria Alexandrovna Spiridonova (16 October 1884-11 September 1941) was a leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in Russia.

Biography
Maria Spiridonova was born in Tambov, Russian Empire to a family of minor nobles, but she became a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party while working as an assembly clerk in the early 1900s. In 1905, she murdered a policeman during the 1905 Revolution, and she was tortured by the police; she was seen as a martyr for the SR cause. Spiridonova would regain her freedom after the 1917 February Revolution toppled Czar Nicholas II of Russia's autocracy, and she led a faction of the SRs into alliance with the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War. However, she was imprisoned after the alliance ended in 1918, and she was sent to a gulag by the NKVD during the Great Purge. On 11 September 1941, Spiridonova and 150 other prisoners were massacred in the "Medvedev Forest massacre" by the NKVD.